Throughout the canned food industry and other similar industries pressure cookers and retorts are used for cooking and sterilizing canned foods. These pressure cooking vessels utilize steam for cooking which is generally at temperatures above 212 .degree.Fahrenheit and pressures above atmospheric pressure. For example, for fruit items the pressure cookers operate at 3 to 5 pounds per square inch above atmospheric pressure and for some meat items they operate up to an estimated 20 to 22 pounds per square inch above atmospheric pressure.
In order to assure uniform cooking, it is important that the pressure cooker be void of occluded air which may form pockets surrounding the items being cooked. In such instances, the air pockets will act as an insulator retarding heat transfer to the food containers and resulting in undercooking or misprocessing of the batch. Therefore, in order to remove such air from the cooking chamber, commercial pressure cookers are provided with bleeders through which air can escape. In a typical commercial installation, bleeders are generally in the form of pipes extending into the cooking chamber along the top of the pressure cookers and retorts. Each pressure cooker shell typically contains about six bleeders which are positioned so that the cooker operator can observe their emissions to insure that the cooker is operating properly and that clogging of the bleeder has not occurred. In addition, as many as three bleeders may be located along the bottom of cooker in order to allow condensate built up in the shell to drain. Whenever condensate is not being drained through these bleeders, steam will be emitted therefrom as with the cooker top bleeders. A single operator may observe as many as 8 or 10 cooker shells, having between 40 and 60 bleeders, on a continuing basis during a work shift.